Malaysia: An Interesting Thing Happened on Our Way Over

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An interesting thing happened on our way to Malaysia:  we got stopped by the passport checker guy at the airport in Bali.  It was actually very minor, but when you hear about  foreign tourists getting tossed into jails here, you can understand that we were trying to be on our best behaviour.  All that really happened was that we overstayed our visas by one day.  When we arrived we told them that we were going to stay for one week:   arriving on Friday and leaving the following Friday.   Technically, that's actually 8 days, but the guy gave us a 7 day visa, and we didn't stop to realize that that's one day short of what we'd need.  So as we were leaving, the guy says we were one day past our visa expiry and would we please come with him.  Uh oh.  We had become those tourists that everyone stares at as they're walked into the back offices by the uniformed passport cop.  The punishment?  A fine of $20 US for each of us.  Nicely, though, the guy did give us a receipt for this.  Typically Balinese.

So, we bade farewell to Bali and said hello to Malaysia.

We had planned on spending lots of time in Malaysia, but as usual with us, we changed our minds.  Still, the week we did spend found us experiencing some interesting things, as the following entries will show.  Enjoy!

Michael and Heather